European eel. (Photo: Stock File)

European project to contribute to European eel and habitat recovery

SPAIN
Wednesday, April 25, 2018, 22:40 (GMT + 9)

A new European project has as its main objective to provide the managers of the SUDOE area (France, Portugal and Spain) with concerted tools and methods to be able to carry out an effective evaluation, management and monitoring of the European eel and its habitat, reinforcing the cooperation among the three countries

Up to now, each Member State has established its actions independently, using different indicators and methodologies. This project will promote, for the first time, concerted and sustainable management in three Member States for the recovery of the European eel population.

The initiative, called the SUDOANG project, is coordinated and led by AZTI. It has a budget of EUR 1.6 million, co-financed by the ERDF through the Interreg Sudoe Program, the fisheries management of the Department of Economic Development and Infrastructure of the Basque Government and the Deputy Body from Gipuzkoa.

The management of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) has been hampered by several factors, including the lack of dialogue, coordination and joint strategies of the actors involved in its conservation as well as the lack of knowledge about the species and the disparity in the methodologies used in the estimation of the assessment indicators.

Currently, these indicators are obtained using different methodologies depending on the country and even the region and, in many cases, they are based on extrapolations of values ​​from other regions.

In addition, although the eels from Spain, France and Portugal constitute a single population (the European eel), they are managed as if they were isolated populations, nationally and even regionally.

The European eel population is critically endangered, according to the IUCN, and outside safe biological limits, according to the ICES.

This species has declined so much that today only 8.7 per cent of eels reach the Spanish coast before 1980. Their survival is threatened by climate change, barriers to migration (in the Iberian peninsula, the eel has lost 80 per cent of its habitat), pollution, unsustainable exploitation and illegal trafficking of eels.

In 2007, the European Community established a regulation (EC 1100/2007) to ensure that all Member States develop eel management plans. However, the population has not shown signs of recovery.

The decline of the European eel has a very specific impact in the SUDOE area: for its role in the trophic chain (its disappearance would have negative effects on the ecosystems in which it lives) and because the employment and the ways of life linked to its fishery are at risk.

The objectives of the SUDOANG project are:

• Provide managers of the SUDOE area with joint evaluation and management tools that reinforce their capacity to make decisions based on greater scientific evidence and in a more concerted manner. To achieve this, an easy-to-use Interactive Web Application will be created that will house several tools that will allow eel managers to study the indicators of the eel stock and the different possible management scenarios. 

• Design a strategy that allows the key parameters for the monitoring of eels in the SUDOE area to be collected in a coordinated and harmonized manner. To do this, an eel tracking network will be created in the SUDOE area. It will be sampled in 10 pilot basins of the Mediterranean and Atlantic SUDOE area, representative of the different ecosystems present in the area (Nivelle, Oria, Nalón, Ulla, Miño, Mondego, Guadalquivir, Guadiaro, Ter and Bages-Sigean). 

• Explore new management approaches that will result in a Government Platform for concerted and effective eel management that is not possible with the traditional approach. 

• Strengthen the cooperation of the agents involved in the governance of the eel and its habitat in the SUDOE area.

In order to carry out the project, a partnership has been built that includes the entire value chain related to the management of the eel in the SUDOE area: 10 research centres and 27 associated partners, including local, regional and national managers, NGOs and fishermen's associations.

Among its Spanish partners are the University of Girona (UdG), the University of Córdoba (UCO) and the Lonxanet Foundation for sustainable fishing (FLPS), along with other six partners from Portugal and France.

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